Roxette

For a brief period of time in the early 1990s, Roxette, a pop/rock duo from Sweden, stood among the top bands in worldwide sales and notoriety, brandishing a simple yet effective blend of pop with a slight edge and occasional hints of dance. The group claims influences ranging from The Beatles to Blondie to new wave music to Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin.

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Perhaps, years after the fact, Roxette's popularity can be difficult to understand or appreciate in light of what critics considered its infectious but nonetheless lightweight music, even compared to what was otherwise on the airwaves at the time. Regardless, there was a time in 1991 when Roxette could command an arena filled with tens of thousands of fans in places as diverse as Buenos Aires, Frankfurt and Sydney. The 1992 release ' -- with a recording of audience members singing along to the tune of the group's biggest hit, "It Must Have Been Love" -- exemplifies this temporary but impressive hold Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson had.

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Worldwide, Roxette has sold more than 40 million copies of its albums and singles, no minor achievement for any pop act. The group's success in the United States alone was arguable. While seemingly not interested in doing so, even by default Roxette could not associate its image with the now-iconic ABBA, another Swedish pop group that struggled for recognition in America while still intact in the late 1970s, but that managed, through revisionism beginning in the early 1990s, to grow into something more intriguing as a legacy.

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ABBA did have some Billboard Top 10 singles and one No. 1 in the 1970s. Even though Roxette couldn't ultimately leave behind the same legacy, the group did ABBA better on the singles chart, achieving four No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1989 and 1991. Roxette also had two No. 2 singles and a few other Top 40 peaks until falling out of site of the Hot 100 in 1994. Even so, by that token, Roxette can be considered a highly successful singles act. The group has been certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with two platinum albums -- 1988's Look Sharp! (released in the U.S. in 1989) and 1991's Joyride -- and two gold singles -- "The Look" and "It Must Have Been Love."

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In Sweden the group has had 17 Top 10 hits, and Roxette has developed a large following throughout South America.

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Duo: For the numerical prefix see Wiktionary....

Sweden: The Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: ') is a Nordic country in Scandinavia, in Northern Europe. It is bordered by Norway on the west, Finland on the northeast, the Skagerrak Strait and the Kattegat Strait on the southwest, and the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia on the east. Sweden has a low populatio...

The Beatles: The Beatles were a British pop and rock group from Liverpool. They are widely regarded as the most important pop group of all time, having achieved broad popular success, critical acclaim and cultural influence. The group shattered many sales records and charted more than 50 top 40 hit singles, incl...